Tag: Main Event Channel

(Jon…erg…just hear me out…*duff*…if we make it to round 2 *duff**duff*…I promise you no less than 20 thousand more buys. Jon?)

At first glance, the pay-per-view numbers that just came in for UFC 159 don’t seem all that terrible. Truth be told, it would be near impossible to declare the event’s 550,000 estimated buys anything less than a success. However, when you realize that the sole reason the fight was booked in the first place was to cash in on the Chael Sonnen circus act, that 500k kind of pales in comparison to the 925,000 UFC 148 pulled in. In fact, it’s pretty much in line with the average Jon Jones-headlined pay-per-view, save his 700k-earning fight with Rashad Evans at UFC 145. MMAFighting’s Dave Meltzer reports:

There was hope for bigger numbers in the days after the fight, due to the strong ratings of UFC 159 shoulder programming. The weigh-ins were the second-highest rated since Fuel began airing. The event also drew the highest ratings for post-fight coverage of a pay-per-view on Fuel. Prelim match ratings on FX were 32 percent above average.

The number would be the company’s second largest of 2013, trailing UFC 158, with Georges St-Pierre vs. Nick Diaz, but ahead of the now No. 3 event of the year, UFC 157, headlined by Ronda Rousey vs. Liz Carmouche.

“The rehab involves, number one, you put [the toe] back into place,” Klapper said. “Line it up again. Wash out the joint because there’s lots of bad bacteria on that mat, and you need to make sure there’s no infection. The rehabilitation is just let things scar down, which they will. Because there’s no fracture of the bone — it’s just a dislocation — in six weeks it’s healed, then you start range of motion and strengthening. Back to fighting, six to eight weeks.”

(Cheick Kongo had never seen Deliverance before, yet in that moment, he somehow knew what was coming. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.)

We know, we know, it’s probably not a good idea to solely base someone’s employment status with the UFC on the existence of their UFC.com profile, but speculation is the hamster that keeps the wheels of intellectual transcendance and creative spontaneity spinning here at CagePotato. That, and a shitload of coke. For the hamster.

Aaaaanyway, word was passed along this morning that longtime heavyweight contender Cheick Kongo no longer has a fighter profile on UFC.com, which can only mean one thing in today’s UFC economy: BANISHMENT.

In all honesty, anyone who noticed how much money Kongo was making even in defeat probably could’ve seen this coming. His legendary come-from-behind KO over Pat Barry aside, Kongo has looked like a shell of himself ever since Frank Mir made good on his promise to change him as a fighter at UFC 107. Once a feared striker, the Frenchman seemed like a fish who had intentionally leaped out of water in his pair of grappling-heavy snoozer decisions over Matt Mitrione and Shawn Jordan, the latter of which we dubbed the worst fight of 2012. Kongo would find no relief in his once-adored striking game, either, suffering two first round knockout losses (to Mark Hunt and Roy Nelson at UFC 144 and 159, respectively) in his past three contests.

While it would be easy to take pot shots at a guy who has subtly threatened us with physical violence before, we are going to take the high road here. So join us after the jump for look back at some of Kongo’s greatest hits.

For a card that featured a nearly-severed toe and two technical decisions due to eye-pokes, hearing the voice of Satan during the UFC 159 broadcast fit in perfectly with the “Cursed” theme of the night. That eerie, disembodied voice — which seemed to say “Jerry Rips!”, whatever that means — popped up twice (if I recall correctly), most notably during the Bisping/Belcher fight. The next day, a YouTube user calling itself Jerry Rips uploaded this compilation of strange audio from the event, some of which you heard and some of which you definitely weren’t supposed to hear.

Did this Jerry Rips fellow hack into the event audio, and has he released this video as a showcase of his work? And what does Jerry Rips want from us? Should I sacrifice a dog to to His Dark Name just in case? Because I’m totally prepared to sacrifice a dog at this point. Check out the video above before it gets inevitably pulled. Here’s the rundown, from the video description:

UFC 159 proved wrong those who said light heavyweight champion Jon Jones would not face adversity before the night was over. The champion did indeed face pain and difficulty Saturday night – it just came after his main event title defense against Chael Sonnen, not during it.

Jones appeared to have no trouble at all taking down Sonnen three times in under a round and then bloodying and stopping the challenger. He celebrated with coaches, smiled wide and even threw in a little show-boating shadow kickboxing right before television analyst Joe Rogan interviewed him.

That’s when Jones, his belt once more fastened around his waist, looked down and first saw that his left big toe was mangled, broken and, perhaps falling off of his foot. The visage of his disgustingly broken toe (photos after the jump) seemed to shock, disturb and nauseate “Bones” but he got a stool, gritted his teeth and soldiered through the interview while doctors worked on the nasty crap going on below the camera’s frame.

As the adrenaline wore off and he saw the damage done, Jones must have begun to feel the pain. He might miss his planned Jamaican vacation, he said, but dammed if Jones wouldn’t go above and beyond with his press duties. Before the fight, idiots in the media criticized Jones for wanting to fight more than wanting to talk (gasp) in the days leading up to UFC 159.

As the night came to a close, however, Jones showed one more way that he could out-Sonnen, Sonnen. You can wrestle, Chael? Fine. I can do it better.

You can talk, Chael? Sure. So can I, and right after whooping you and with a bone sticking out of my foot.

It’s almost unfair to write about the light-heavyweight title fight between Jon Jones and Chael Sonnen from last night’s UFC 159 right now, since we won’t know whether or not this fight delivered what it was supposed to for a long time. I’m not writing about the way that Jon Jones effortlessly defeated Chael Sonnen; we knew Sonnen was absolutely no threat to the light-heavyweight kingpin. I’m not writing about how Jones completely ignored his vastly superior striking and ridiculous reach advantage in order defeat “the gangster from West Linn” by impersonating him; we sort-of predicted that Jones would clown his way through this fight. We knew that the main event was going to deliver a lopsided beat-down. It’s yet to be seen how – or even if – the marketability of Jon Jones will benefit as a result.

That being said, it’s hard to expect the superfight we never asked for to have much of an effect on the way that fans perceive Jones. I didn’t think it was possible to feel as apathetic about a first round knockout as I felt after last night’s main event. Judging by the comments I’ve read on our liveblog, I’m hardly alone here. When it was over, the match felt more like a bad professional wrestling storyline than a UFC pay-per-view main event, and the outcome felt just as forced.

If there’s one thing that Michael Bisping knows how to do, it’s convincingly sell eachandevery one of his fights as a “grudge match.” If there’s a second thing Michael Bisping knows how to do, it’s make a bunch of promises about said fights that he has no intention of following through with. Set to face Alan Belcher at UFC 159 this weekend, Bisping has already made sure to check both of those items off his list. First, he promised fans that he will knock Belcher out in the first round — something he has promised ad nauseum over the years yet hasn’t actually done since 2008 — and at today’s UFC 159 presser, he successfully convinced us that his fight with Belcher really is a grudge match. Touche, Mee-kale.

In either case, Bisping and Belcher made sure to get the shit-talking started early at today’s presser, and we’ve thrown the video above for your enjoyment. So check it out, then let us know how many times you think Bisping will point at Belcher’s face and scream “You’re dead!” come weigh-in time. He seems to enjoy doing that.

For a dead man walking, Chael Sonnen sure seems to be enjoying the hell out of his final days on death row. The UFC’s favorite hypeman appeared on ESPN’s flagship program, Sportscenter, just hours ago to plug his upcoming public execution at UFC 159 and appeared to be channeling the great Bobby Knight during his brief interview, leaving Sportscenter anchor (and all around fox) Sage Steele grasping at straws in attempt to steer things in any other direction but that of a complete farce. She tried, dammit.

The segment began in typical Sonnen-fashion – interrupting/patronizing the interviewer, throwing a couple WWE-esque threats at Jones, arms, charms, rinse, repeat — but quickly took a turn for what people in the television industry refer to as “What-the-fucks-ville” after Sonnen promised to put Bones “on his ass” on live television. Sure, it was a pretty mild offense given the current spectrum of television, but the remark incurred the subtle wrath of Steele nonetheless. But if there’s one thing Chael P. Sonnen doesn’t understand, it’s subtlety. And being that Chael is mere days away from being beaten into a coma at best, he figured he might as well check off one last item from his bucket list: feeling an African American woman’s hair. It was a weird moment for everyone involved.